Scarlet Letter

            In Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Arthur Dimmesdale has a difficult time finding a way to relieve his sin. The Scarlet Letter's scaffold holds more importance than just somewhere to condemn prisoners, and, for Dimmesdale, it is a place to find peace. It is the one place where Dimmesdale felt liberated to say anything he wished. In Puritan culture, the scaffold is used to humiliate and discipline prisoners, be it witches at the stake, thieves in the stocks, or a murderer hanging from the gallows. In The Scarlet Letter, the scaffold was viewed more as a place of judgment, "Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for from such by-standers, at the scaffold- (Hawthorne 63). .
             Indeed, the scaffold was used for castigation, but it was also a place of trial. Standing upon the platform opens oneself to God, and to the world, "They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another- (Hawthorne 142). Being on the scaffold puts oneself in a feeling of spiritual nakedness, where one feels exposed to God, but cleansed by it. It was the one place where Dimmesdale could find complete reconciliation. Witnessing such an event as reconciliation is quite a fascinating experience. But without knowing what is going on, it can also be quite horrifying, "Without any effort of his will, or power to restrain himself, he [Dimmesdale] shrieked aloud; an outcry that went pealing through the night, and was beaten back from one house to another, and reverberated from the hills in the background; as if a company of devils, detecting so much misery and terror in it, had made a plaything of the sound, and were bandying it to and fro- (Hawthorne 136). .
             Indeed, the townsfolk heard Dimmesdale's shouting, " drowsy slumberers mistook the cry either for something frightful in a dream, or for the noise of witches- (Hawthorne 136).